#MentoringStories – ICF
by MentorcliQ
For National Mentoring Month, MentorcliQ has been sharing this #MentoringStories series. National Mentoring Month is the time of year to reflect on mentoring relationships that have made an impact in your life and in your career. If you missed the first mentoring stories featuring FOX, Cardinal Health, and Partners HealthCare you can catch up here. We are excited to share inspiring mentoring stories from customers that are making their employee’s careers brighter and gratifying through employee mentoring programs. In this series, we are going to highlight some stories from real employee mentoring program participants. Our Fourth mentoring story comes from ICF International!
What Mentoring Means At ICF
Mentoring at ICF initially started as a grassroots movement but in recent years has scaled from the manual spreadsheet driven initiative into a company wide global program with the help of mentoring software. As the employee base at the international consulting firm is comprised of a highly educated population of scientists from diverse industries, the biggest priority from a company standpoint was to connect people from different background and industries who wouldn’t otherwise connect and use design thinking to open their minds. With that in mind, the ultimate goal of ICF’s program is to break down silos within the organization and encourage cross pollination to layer skill sets and solve problems through innovation.
| +700 PARTICIPANTS | +8,500 MENTORING HOURS |
For 3 years, ICF has successfully run multiple 6 month mentoring cycles engaging 10% of their employee population with each cohort. With over 8,500 mentoring hours in key focus areas like project management, career growth, managing others, and work life balance. ICF has had great success with the mentoring program not only amongst participants but business unit leads and executives as well.
ICF #MentoringStories
In addition to a large percentage of their company participating in mentoring, ICF has been able to measure their success based on the demand from mentors and mentees. They have had mentors return over multiple cycles and even had previous mentees return as mentors, showcasing that mentors get just as much out of a program as mentees do. In a previous internal survey ICF found that over 9/10 program participants would recommend the mentoring program to a colleague. In this recommendation one participant reflects that the program felt more like meeting with a close friend than a structured mentoring program. The ability to celebrate successes and celebrate innovative ways of thinking is one of the many reasons ICF participants continue to return to the program.
“The time we shared was always like a cup of coffee with a dear friend. While we had our agendas and goals, they were never the driving force behind our connectedness. We kept the “people” element at the forefront and shared ideas; raised new questions; celebrated accomplishments; and gave ourselves permission to “THINK BIG”! This experience has proven to be a demonstration of ICF’s brand of making big things possible. Thank You!”
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